I love smoothies, but with them going for $5+ a pop, it's not something I will allow myself to buy often. Insert this quick smoothie recipe and I can have a smoothie anytime I like in a matter of minutes!

Here are my ingredients ready for prep.

I bought pre-frozen strawberries and blueberries because it was a better deal than buying fresh and freezing myself. Also, the strawberries were already sliced so it saves me a little time!

I chose weight watchers vanilla yogurt because, again, it was the best deal. [Also chose to use a magic bullet instead of a big blender b/c a) they are awesome and b)less to clean!]

First I measured 1tbsp scoops of yogurt into a mini muffin tin. I didn't level it off, considering some of the yogurt was going to stick in the measuring cup. Once they were filled, I froze them. [the recipe I found on pinterest used ice trays, but I didn't have any of those on hand so I improvised.]

Next I got to chopping my fresh fruit!

And then arranged them on a silpat mat and popped it in my freezer![You could use a baking sheet if you don't have a silpat! I just chose something that would fit in my freezer & the fact that i could just roll all of the frozen fruit off when I was finished was a plus!] You want your fruit to be pre frozen before you combine them so that they don' freeze together in the packs.

A few hours later when everything was frozen, I laid everything out to prepare to bag my individual "smoothie mixes". If you use muffin tins like I did, let them sit out for a few minutes so they loosen up a bit, then use a spoon and they will pop out like ice cubes. [DON'T dip the bottom of the pan in warm water to loosen them up. I tried that(before i even bothered using a spoon) and they got melty really quick and i had to refreeze them!]

I used just short of a cup and half of fruit for each bag and 3 yogurt cubes.

After they are all bagged up, pop them in the freezer! Next time you want a smoothie, you're ready to go! Just add a little juice or milk and voila! I may try to add a little oatmeal or wheat grass next time to pump it up even more since I'm treating the smoothies as breakfast.

I was able to make 8 smoothies with the amount of fruit I had.

1 bag of strawberries, 1 bag of blueberries, 3 bananas and 2 kiwis. My total cost was $11 including yogurt, which brings my total for each smoothie to a whopping $1.37 & averaging around 200ish calories.

Lacey-1 Smoothie King-0

[all photos via me]

DISCLAIMER: I am not a nutritionist or health professional, I'm simply a girl who likes a quick smoothie! So, unfortunately, I don't know the answer to all of your great questions. I know... bummer. I can only suggest that you google it! That's what i would do! If there is something you think I may know the answer to, I'm happy to try! If you have a question that is health/nutrition related- I can refer you to a great Wellness Coach who I am sure would be happy to help you with your questions!

- If you freeze the yogurt, do you still follow the expiration date? Nope! I follow the same guidelines for freezing milk. It can keep for 3-5 months in the freezer, or 1 year in a deep freezer. I use my packs up within two weeks, so that has never been a concern for me ;)

Do you have to thaw out your smoothie packs before you blend them? No way! Having everything frozen keeps you from having to add ice! Just add juice or milk to get it all moving together in the blender!

A good addition would be fresh spinach leaves. The banana and yogurt really cover the taste so you don't even know it's there! Plus an awesome dose of fiber to keep the body working! And maybe a dash of protein powder, just to even it all out. The fructose can really spike blood sugar so having other elements for the body to digest will help prevent the spike/fall sugar effect.

I only buy the yoplait ones when they are on sale and I have a coupon. I really do love them so this is a great way to get the same taste and nutrients for about the same cost as when I use coupons. Thank you!

Great idea! Saw this on pinterest. I also have more muffin tins than ice cube trays, plus we have a magic bullet. Have you tried this with store-bought frozen fruit? That might be the route I go. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for this idea. I made the bags yesterday and just made my first smoothie. I used almond soymilk. It took awhile to blend because of it being frozon (I kept having to stop and rearrange everything so it would "go" again). Would the Bullet be better in this case? Also, I like the idea of oatmeal & sorry if this is a dumb question, but do you just put uncooked oatmeal in with the smoothie stuff or is it cooked? Thanks!

Please leave me an email address to reach you at if you ask a question! I've tried to email quite a few of you answers, but can't(sad face) b/c your accounts are set up to be "no reply bloggers" Here is a post on how to fix that!

GREAT IDEA---I do this a lot mainly in the summer when fruit is so abundant and cheaper - but I have never frozen the yogurt. I add a scoop of Juice Plus Complete all plant based protein powder and I have a complete meal. Good to add fresh spinach as well. It will change the color but not the flavor. I will also use this idea when I do my smoothie classes!Tammy CarrithersHolistic Nutritional Counselor

Just did this with doubling the recipe! I ended up with about 15 bags. I used wax paper in a cake pan and just dropped the yogurt on there to freeze. It was so easy to peel the yogurt off the paper after it was frozen. I can't wait till tomorrow to try one for breakfast!

Hey, I know this was posted awhile ago and I think it is an amazing idea. I have just one question : When you make up your bags do you just put one thing of yogurt from the muffin tin, so essentially you could make 12 bags of smoothie mixes? And if you use ice cube trays you use 3 ice cubes of yogurt??

I used to make pre-measured frozen yogurt with my dog's omega-3 mixed in. I'd line a mini muffin pan with press'n seal before filling them and then cover the whole thing with another piece of press'n seal to cover it all. It made it really easy to pop them out, didn't need to let the tray sit out for them to all soften when we only need one at a time.

I don't even worry about scooping. I buy individual sized yogurts and freeze them in their tubs. Run outside in hot water and then squirt in to bags. Also, I take a liquid vitamin, so I put that in with some protein powder

I know it works for other stuff but I'm not sure if it would work for this...have you tried spraying the bottom of your muffin pans with Pam to see if the frozen yogurt pops out? Just a thought...also, I'm going to make these today...thanks for the idea.

This is an awesome idea... something to make it quicker for you... I've a couple of these that I use for baby food and stuff but they'd be perfect for freezing the yogurt (and so much easier!)http://www.qubies.com/

Our smoothies probably taste the same. I always pick up extra fruit (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, mangoes) etc when it's on sale and cut it up and freeze it right away on trays. Then I dump all of it in a huge ziploc bag and keep that in the freezer. I buy natural frozen yogourt (in the ice cream section) and fill up the blender with a few scoops of that, milk/juice, and toss in a few handfuls of fruit. With six of us in the house, I just like making one huge blender full at once and then everyone gets one. I like the idea of individual smoothies, but really, in this house, I can never drink that by myself!

Lacey, I found your smoothie idea on pinterest and gave it a try tonight. Genius! I included a paragraph about it in my blog tonight and added a link to your blog to give you credit. Hope that is okay with you!

They prep is in the freezer now so excited to have "fresh" smoothies on hand at all times. :) that is until they're all gone and all for under $7.00 plus I made 36 yugurt cubes instead of 24 so I have some extra for other uses :)

I am now a smoothie addict! Came home from work the other night and made a smoothie instead of ice cream- yea! I also add some powdered Benefiber and almonds to mine. One more bonus- I just found huge bags of frozen sliced strawberries and blueberries at Sam's Club- oober cheap!

My mom has a huge garden with lots of spinach so she freezes all that she doesn't eat fresh and then uses it for smoothies. You would never know that it was frozen! I am sure you could just add the spinach to your fruit or just freeze it in it's own bag because it breaks apart easily when frozen.

I haven't had a smoothie in a while, but used to make them every day when I was pregnant. I needed a huge blast of protein every morning or I'd get really sick, so I added vanilla whey powder. Also spinach doesn't even change the flavor but adds good stuff.Just some other ideas, though your recipe is fantastic as-is. I think I might need to get back on the smoothie track!

Great idea, I may have to borrow. One thing to think about if you really want to pump them up. Turn them into green smoothies by adding a handful of spinach and a scoop of whey protein powder. Ups the cals by about 90, but lasts as breakfast much longer. ;-)

I love the Activia yogurts and always buy the big pack from Sam's Club because it's the better purchase. However, I'm not all that crazy about the vanilla yogurts in the pack. Thanks so much for the amazing idea on how to use these! I love making fruit shakes with my protein mix already. Now I'll just add my frozen vanilla to the mix ;) Thank you so much for the great idea!

I love buying the Activia yogurt packs from Sam's Club, but not too crazy about the vanilla yogurts in the pack. Thanks for the amazing idea on how to use the vanilla yogurts. I already make fruit protein shakes for breakfast. Now I'll just add the frozen vanilla yogurts to the mix to spruce it up! Btw...I'll be adding some spinach to the mix too! That too, was a great idea! I can't wait! ;)

Great idea!!! Just saw this on pintrest. Totally going to do it - thanks so much you are going to save me lots of nice wonderful twenty dollar bills. To take my family to get smoothies usually is a once a month treat because its like $20 for the three of us. Crazy huh. Great pictures too :)

I worked in a yogurt store that made smoothies - with cranberry juice, try strawberries and raspberries. Also, that recipe except half cranberry juice/half apple juice. And to leave banana out of any of them, just up the other ingredients to compensate :-) Pineapple juice with peaches was a huge seller, too.

I worked in a yogurt store that made smoothies... with cranberry juice (or, half cranberry, half apple - YUM), try raspberries and strawberries. If you want to leave banana out of anything, just up the amount of the other ingredients. We were taught that that was a no-no, but I'm allergic to bananas, sooo...!! Also, pineapple juice with peaches was a huge seller, as was pineapple juice with strawberry. :-)

Found this on Pinterest AGES ago but never got around to trying it. I've been having a hard time with breakfast since I got pregnant and random found this post in my bookmarks yesterday. I decided to try it out, and love it! I found in my Wal-Mart freezer section not only frozen sliced strawberries, but ones with sliced banana mixed in! Got two bags if those, the yogurt, and kiwis. I had some frozen raspberries and a bag of frozen mixed berries still at home (I took the whole strawberries out of the mixed bag) so I decided to use those first. I just stuck the kiwi pieces in the muffin tin with the yogurt because my freezer is tiny, and made my packs this morning. I also added spinach. LOVE IT! I would say if you don't mind the seeds the rasp- and black berries are great, but if you don't like the seeds stick with blueberries. I will next time. Now, to figure out if there's a protein powder I can get that's "safe" for pregnant women.

Ok, so I have some questions as well that have been mentioned above but I haven't seen a response to...can you freeze the fruit then add to the yogurt & freeze together say in a baggie? If you use a muffin tin do you just use one of those & 3 if you use an ice tray? When you add juice before blending, how much do you recommend using? brittneynicole7@yahoo.com

I've been mashing and freezing banana in cubes for ages and also using the store bought frozen fruit. I've even blended soft bananas with peanut butter and a little milk and frozen these in ice cube trays for smoothies. But I never thought of combining the whole lot! Thanks for sharing :)

What a FUN blog + best smoothie idea. Found u on Pinterest (eye candy ;-) Sometimes we forget good ideas! TY4 this post & all for comments. I used to (+ will again) get bananas on sale as they at a great point for freezing. Peel, squash a bit into freezer bags. Can usually get 3 in each w/no prob to break off what I need. NOW w/all these great ideas- I will have B'fast READY as tooo hard to THINK in AM ;-)

I often buy super ripe bananas (at a discount) cut and freeze them add a little protein powder, other fruit, or cocoa powder and just add milk the next morning. These are soooo good and the frozen banana really thickens them up!

Thanks for the recipe! I have an awesome tip I wanted to share! I wake up really early and cant use the blender in the morning so I blend these up, freeze the amount I can fit into a travel cup, and lay flat in my freezer. The night before I want one, I just pull it out of the freezer and pop it in the fridge. In the morning it is slushy and I put it int the travel cup and go. U may have to adjust the time u need to thaw but it works great!!

The part about pre-freezing before putting the fruit into the pack is genius! I wouldn't have even thought about that! Great work! Trying this as soon as I can get my hands on some produce!! :) thanks!